Malta Arts Festival - Powerful festival opener
Stefan Cassar and Quator Stringendo, Palace Courtyard
This year's long-awaited Malta Arts Festival kicked off to a good start albeit not to a full house on Wednesday, July 2 with a chamber music recital involving a total of six very gifted musicians who performed three widely differing compositions by Zoltan Kodaly, Alfred Schnittke and Frederic Chopin respectively at the Palace Courtyard, Valletta.
Featuring Maltese pianist Stefan Cassar together with the Quator Stringendo (Frederic Bardon and Aya Souverbie - violins, Ayako Oyabegan - viola, and Frederic Dutheil - cello) and Marin Bea on the double bass, the recital was feasible due to its comparatively large number of musicians who played in various formations and styles.
The first item, Kodaly's Intermezzo for String Trio, revealed an excellent rapport between one musician and another, which resulted in a wonderfully homogeneous tone, a characteristic of the entire performance. Kodaly was the most easily assimilable of the three pieces to be performed in that it relied on lyrically lucid passages composed within a framework of long accepted principles of tonality, nevertheless producing a new and individual kind of music marked by a definite reawakening of interest in Hungarian folk roots.
Schnittke's arresting Piano Quintet was on a completely different note. It is one of the composer's more stylistically unified works which somewhat moved away from the polystylism where music of various different styles, past and present are juxtaposed, which had characterised his earlier works. Considered as one of the most important 20th century works written for the piano quintet medium with existing music conventions thrown overboard, tonality, harmony melody and rhythm broke away from the consensus that had governed western music for centuries.
It was here that Schnittke's Russo-Germanic roots, nourished in his studies in Vienna, which was to remain for a long time the focal point of all endeavours to find new substitutes for melodic and harmonic organisation, were evident. A long-melancholic start on the piano set the tone for the rest of the piece which was characterised by a repetition of tiny motivic cells, polymetric and polyrhythmic techniques. This too revealed excellent teamwork and showed up Stefan Cassar in a new light. We have been accustomed to listening to him as an accomplished piano soloist with a more "conventional" repertoire. He was just as at home integrating with the string players, although it was a pity that he could not be seen because of their positioning. Also the fact that the piece required more playing in unison rather than allowing space for one instrument to shine above the rest did not allow for solo virtuoso playing. Instead the bravura of the piece, which cannot be defaulted, depended wholly on teamwork.
In the chamber version of Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1, the piano somewhat retained its dominant role as it would have done had the piece been played in its original version, i.e. as a piano concerto. Still physically overshadowed by the other musicians, perhaps for practical reasons because in this position he could easily communicate in particular with the first violinist, acoustically Mr Cassar came into his own. In the first movement, he moved from delicate embellishments to powerful arpeggios with ease; in the second romanza movement, he established the haunting, nocturnal music of the entire movement, interacting subtly with the string instruments which included the double bass. A spirited Rondo in which the piano assumed the key role played against overt accompanying figures in the strings, ending powerfully and bringing the recital to an assertive end.
As often happens with these outdoor events, albeit in beautiful settings such as this, one always has to make allowances for obtrusive noise, this time in the form of discourteous chatting in the background.
Featuring Maltese pianist Stefan Cassar together with the Quator Stringendo (Frederic Bardon and Aya Souverbie - violins, Ayako Oyabegan - viola, and Frederic Dutheil - cello) and Marin Bea on the double bass, the recital was feasible due to its comparatively large number of musicians who played in various formations and styles.
The first item, Kodaly's Intermezzo for String Trio, revealed an excellent rapport between one musician and another, which resulted in a wonderfully homogeneous tone, a characteristic of the entire performance. Kodaly was the most easily assimilable of the three pieces to be performed in that it relied on lyrically lucid passages composed within a framework of long accepted principles of tonality, nevertheless producing a new and individual kind of music marked by a definite reawakening of interest in Hungarian folk roots.
Schnittke's arresting Piano Quintet was on a completely different note. It is one of the composer's more stylistically unified works which somewhat moved away from the polystylism where music of various different styles, past and present are juxtaposed, which had characterised his earlier works. Considered as one of the most important 20th century works written for the piano quintet medium with existing music conventions thrown overboard, tonality, harmony melody and rhythm broke away from the consensus that had governed western music for centuries.
It was here that Schnittke's Russo-Germanic roots, nourished in his studies in Vienna, which was to remain for a long time the focal point of all endeavours to find new substitutes for melodic and harmonic organisation, were evident. A long-melancholic start on the piano set the tone for the rest of the piece which was characterised by a repetition of tiny motivic cells, polymetric and polyrhythmic techniques. This too revealed excellent teamwork and showed up Stefan Cassar in a new light. We have been accustomed to listening to him as an accomplished piano soloist with a more "conventional" repertoire. He was just as at home integrating with the string players, although it was a pity that he could not be seen because of their positioning. Also the fact that the piece required more playing in unison rather than allowing space for one instrument to shine above the rest did not allow for solo virtuoso playing. Instead the bravura of the piece, which cannot be defaulted, depended wholly on teamwork.
In the chamber version of Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1, the piano somewhat retained its dominant role as it would have done had the piece been played in its original version, i.e. as a piano concerto. Still physically overshadowed by the other musicians, perhaps for practical reasons because in this position he could easily communicate in particular with the first violinist, acoustically Mr Cassar came into his own. In the first movement, he moved from delicate embellishments to powerful arpeggios with ease; in the second romanza movement, he established the haunting, nocturnal music of the entire movement, interacting subtly with the string instruments which included the double bass. A spirited Rondo in which the piano assumed the key role played against overt accompanying figures in the strings, ending powerfully and bringing the recital to an assertive end.
As often happens with these outdoor events, albeit in beautiful settings such as this, one always has to make allowances for obtrusive noise, this time in the form of discourteous chatting in the background.